ASK AN ECO ACTIVIST
This month Dr Jane Goodall, conservationist and primatologist
YOUR CHARITY ROOTS & SHOOTS IS 30 IN 2021. HOW DID IT START?
I set up Roots & Shoots after meeting secondary school students in Tanzania. It enables young people to work on environmental issues that worry them the most. The students felt overwhelmed by a raft of problems from animal poaching to ocean pollution and didn’t know where to start. I suggested they form groups and start local projects. One of the first was a big beach clean.
HOW BIG IS IT NOW?
Today, there are 150,000 groups in 100 countries. Some members are at nursery school, others at university. The arts have always been important in inspiring action – in New York, a group of children put on a play, which convinced their school to stop using polystyrene in lunches. Roots & Shoots is helping to raise generations who show compassion and respect for the world.
WERE YOU AN ECO-KID?
I grew up in Bournemouth and loved being outside. When I was four, we went on holiday to a farm in Kent. I remember seeing sheep grazing and cows being milked by hand into a bucket. There was no television back then, so my knowledge about nature came largely from observation. As a teenager, I longed to go to Africa, where I could live with animals and write books about them. I eventually got to Tanzania, where I worked for Louis Leakey, a leading anthropologist. He recommended I get a degree. I studied for a PHD and became a scientist.
HOW DID YOU GET INTO ACTIVISM?
In the Eighties, I was at a conference in Chicago, where I learned how fast chimpanzees were disappearing – people were shooting mothers and selling their infants. We were also taking over their habitat. I knew I had to do something.
WHAT’S SO SPECIAL ABOUT CHIMPS?
Chimpanzees kiss, hold hands and even adopt orphans. They use objects as tools and can conduct warfare. Studying them shows that we are not the only beings with minds and emotions – we are part of the animal kingdom. We are more intelligent, but that’s why it seems odd that we are destroying our only home.
WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT IT?
We should think about the choices we make every day – what we buy, eat and wear. Where does it come from? Is it cheap because of slave labour? Did its production harm animals or the environment? I’d recommend eating less meat, as current levels are destroying land and have led to intensive animal farming. I’m on the road for 300 days a year, talking at events. I want people to see that we’re living in dark times. There is hope, but we have to take action.
YOU INSPIRE MANY. WHO INSPIRES YOU?
Don Merton, who saved the black robin of New Zealand from extinction when there were just seven left; Rachel Carson, the marine biologist whose work led to the banning of pesticide DDT; plus Nelson Mandela for opposing apartheid; and the rangers who put themselves in danger just by doing their work. Finally, all the young people I meet. They are determined to make the world a better place. Together, I hope we can make a difference.